By
Walt Gardner | Overwhelming numbers of public schools that have
long been considered paragons of academic excellence are failing,
creating anxiety and anger among parents who are bewildered by the
trend.

The cause for their concern is the No Child Left Behind Act, the
Bush administrations basic educational initiative. The law contains
a series of non-negotiable demands that create a sharp disparity
between parental perception and governmental classification. Chief
among these is that ever-increasing numbers of students must earn
proficiency-level scores in order for their school to make adequate
yearly progress over a 12-year, state-determined timeline. If any
historically underserved subgroup, such as minority or handicapped
students, does not meet this requirement, the entire school is regarded
as failing, no matter how exemplary its other accomplishments may
be. That means that awards in academic decathlons, debating, music,
drama, or art count for naught. It also means that impressive college-acceptance
data, the hitherto sine qua non of educational excellence, are irrelevant.

Instead, the sole basis for the schools rating is performance on
state-developed standardized tests in reading and math administered
annually in grades three to eight and once again in high school.
The law requires that 100 percent of students must be proficient
by 2014, or their school will be taken over. Never mind that no
country has ever been able to meet this goal. NCLB also requires
all schools to have a highly qualified teacher in every classroom.
Never mind the difficulty of recruiting teachers in such high-demand
fields as science and math.

To complicate matters, no two states have to reach exactly the same
standards to satisfy the law. That was the deal that states demanded
in order to preserve control over their schools. Each state can
determine how much a student needs to know to be proficient, how
much yearly learning progress is sufficient and what qualities make
for a highly qualified teacher. In Missouri, for example, a school
can meet its annual progress goals if 19.4 percent of its students
score proficient in reading. Yet, despite the low bar, 50.3 percent
of schools in the state fell short of 2002-03 goals. In Ohio 40
percent must be proficient. There 21.6 percent missed their targets.
In California, about 45 percent of the states 7,145 schools did
not meet their test goals, and more than 1,500 are classified as
failing for having fallen short of federal standards for two consecutive
years. In Florida, only 408 of the states 3,177 public schools
did well enough this year, meaning that many more will likely be
failing next year. This hodgepodge of data is as confusing as it
is useless for parents trying to judge their local schools. But
NCLB insists on quantifying all educational outcomes in the dubious
belief that only what can be measured is worthwhile.

If parents are somehow able to decode the available data and decide
that they want to take their children out of the school they are
enrolled in, they can request a transfer under NCLB. But time and
again, they learn that no space is available in the better schools.
In Chicago, more than 19,000 students asked to transfer, but the
district had only about 1,000 places for them. New York reports
that fewer than one-third of students who requested transfers actually
got them. Other cities cite similar mismatches.

Even if space is found, the transition is not always smooth. Parents
at schools that are required to accept transfer students worry about
the impact of these students on the school. Theres good reason
for that concern. A disproportionate number of students who flee
failing schools under NCLB bring with them huge deficits in socialization,
motivation, and intellectual development to class. As a result,
they require an inordinate amount of time, energy, and money to
educate. This unavoidably detracts from the educational program
for existing students.

How we got into this situation is an instructive lesson in educational
history. In 1965, Congress passed Title I of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, which was the first major grant of federal
dollars to low-income schools. But the money that was originally
earmarked for inner-city and rural schools serving poor students
soon became coveted by suburban districts and was diluted. To refocus
on the worst-performing schools, George W. Bush instituted the concept
of regular testing and higher standards that eventually became codified
in the No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in January 2002.

Supporters of the law adamantly maintain that only stringent standards
and rigid enforcement of the laws provisions can make schools accountable.
They point to the long history of lax enforcement of previous legislation
by the U.S. Department of Education. Theres truth to that charge,
but in order for NCLB to work as intended, its demands have to be
realistic, which theyre not, and they need to be adequately funded,
which they arent. When the bill was written, $32 billion was initially
authorized. President Bush has since whittled that amount down to
$22.6 billion. The rancor has reached such a point that state legislators
in Hawaii and in New England have proposed opting out of the federal
program and losing the funding that now gives the government its
leverage over states.

Whether more states follow is beside the point. As long as testing
in its present form is retained anywhere, it contains the unavoidable
potential to harm students under the guise of helping them. Thats
because the tests in use today do not support teachers in their
efforts to intervene in the learning process so that all students
are able to reach their full potential. The tests fail on two counts
in this regard. They are designed primarily to sort students out
so that they can be compared with each other, even when this means
including material that is highly unlikely to be taught in class.
(Thats how the widely watched rankings of schools are created.)
They dont provide teachers with useful feedback until after the
school year is over and students are gone. (By then, its too late
to pinpoint weaknesses and take corrective action.)

Yet, despite these known pedagogical fatal flaws, teachers are under
enormous pressure to narrow curriculum and instruction to what is
likely to appear on the test in order to make themselves and their
schools look good in the ratings game. Test scores then rise, leading
some parents erroneously to conclude that their childrens schools
are praiseworthy. But unknown to them, educational quality suffers
in the process.

As the truth slowly emerges about how high-stakes testing is sucking
the intellectual life out of the classroom, a nascent backlash is
developing. Knowledgeable parents are beginning to demand authentic
assessment of student learning, rather than tests that assess decontextualized
knowledge. They want open-ended measuressuch as student-created
portfolios of literary essays, science projects, and art displaysthat,
they correctly maintain, more genuinely reflect what students really
know. They call for student presentations that cut across strict
subject matter lines, made before a panel of judges. This kind of
performance-based assessment brings together skills and knowledge
that in the end constitute the basis for the development of critical
thinking and problem-solving ability. These are the qualities that
make for success in the real world when todays children will be
tomorrows adults.

But more can be done. Parents need to work closely with their local
schools to make their concerns known. They can get their opposition
to high-stakes testing on the PTA agenda so that the subject can
be openly discussed and pressure brought to bear on principals and
politicians. They can write letters to local newspapers and form
neighborhood committees to make their views known through presentations
at chamber-of-commerce luncheons and at other service organizations.

How NCLB will eventually play out remains to be seen. The law that
is beginning to generate strong resistance in some of the nations
90,000 public schools also has its supporters, who are equally committed.
The result is a battle for the future of public education that carries
with it far-reaching consequences not only for students but for
the country as a whole.

Walt
Gardner C57 taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School
District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.
He writes frequently on education.